124 Best Dishes

We scoured the city for the top offerings on Chicago’s world-class restaurant scene. From appetizer through dessert, from über haute pineapple rum soup to down-home juicy fried chicken, here’s your road map to the 124 yummiest dishes around.

There’s a certain look a dining critic gets when a compelling menu item turns out to be as good as it sounded. It’s a goofy grin that says, “Hey, I didn’t think I could be surprised anymore.” In the past year, our reviewers tasted roughly 5,000 dishes and still found themselves flabbergasted. Sometimes perfection popped up in unexpected places, such as in Flamingo’s fish tacos; other times the spark came from exotica like Riccardo Trattoria’s hearty tripe Florentine. The true pleasure of the quest, though, lies in the discovery of stunning creations—beer jam-glazed quail with aged Gruyère at Vie comes to mind. Here are 124 such revelations. In the words of a not-so-great poet, eat ’em and smile.